Three senate bills on behavioral health and a House legislative bundle focused on criminal competency demonstrate both chambers’ efforts to tackle public safety early on in the current session.
The Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee spent most of its time Monday afternoon discussing Senate Bill 3, the Behavioral Health Reform and Investment Act.
SB-3 empowers the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) to specify behavioral health regions, orchestrate the development of each region’s behavioral health plans, and outline how individuals traverse the criminal justice system.
One of the bill’s 15 cosponsors, Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, told the committee that a measure passed during last year’s abbreviated special legislative session on public safety gave them a head start on the bill.
The one bill passed by the state legislature at that session appropriated $3 million for assisted outpatient and competency diversion pilot programs.
The First Judicial District just launched the first of those programs, a collaborative achievement that Wirth said sets a model for implementing them throughout New Mexico.
“They worked with the local governments. They worked with the providers doing exactly that type of the bottom up infrastructure work to lift that off the ground,” Wirth said.
“Because if we hadn't done that just as an example, then we would've been seven, eight months farther behind in all the different districts with the pilots. So the pilots really give us a sense that this can work, and now we're taking it kind of statewide.”
During a discussion of amendments to the measure, health committee member and Republican Senator Jay Block said that he and Democratic senator and fellow committee member Antoinette Sedillo Lopez worked together on tweaking the legislation.
Saying it was like “the heavens opened up,” Block identified it as an important moment of bipartisanship.
“This should show New Mexico we can really work together,” said Block.
“We had a great session to go through the bill. I think we still have some tweaking to do, whether it's in here or the Senate Finance. It's a good bill that will make huge impacts across New Mexico.”
The Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee passed SB-3 by and 8 to 1 margin with Senator Larry Scott the lone dissenter.
The package of Senate behavioral health bills next moves to the Senate Finance Committee.
